CVE-2019-14822
Description
A flaw was discovered in ibus that allows any unprivileged user to monitor and send method calls to the ibus bus of another user due to a misconfiguration in the DBus server setup. A local attacker may use this flaw to intercept all keystrokes of a victim user who is using the graphical interface, change the input method engine, or modify other input related configurations of the victim user.
Statement
Gnome uses the ibus input framework only when the user explicitly configures it or when some input method sources are in use, like Korean from the ibus-hangul package or Chinese input methods from the ibus-libpinyin. Input methods like en-US are not handled by ibus, thus if the victim user just use them the attacker will not be able to intercept the key strokes of that user.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 6.1 | 7.1 | N/A |
| Attack Vector | Local | Local | N/A |
| Attack Complexity | Low | Low | N/A |
| Privileges Required | Low | Low | N/A |
| User Interaction | None | None | N/A |
| Scope | Unchanged | Unchanged | N/A |
| Confidentiality | High | High | N/A |
| Integrity Impact | Low | High | N/A |
| Availability Impact | None | None | N/A |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:N
NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Confidentiality
Technical Impact: Read Application Data; Read Files or Directories
An attacker could read sensitive data, either by reading the data directly from a data store that is not restricted, or by accessing insufficiently-protected, privileged functionality to read the data.
Integrity
Technical Impact: Modify Application Data; Modify Files or Directories
An attacker could modify sensitive data, either by writing the data directly to a data store that is not restricted, or by accessing insufficiently-protected, privileged functionality to write the data.
Access Control
Technical Impact: Gain Privileges or Assume Identity; Bypass Protection Mechanism
An attacker could gain privileges by modifying or reading critical data directly, or by accessing privileged functionality.
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory); DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)
An attacker could gain unauthorized access to resources on the system and excessively consume those resources, leading to a denial of service.
Acknowledgements
Red Hat would like to thank Simon McVittie (Collabora Ltd.) for reporting this issue.
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